August 01, 2010
SAR members were called Saturday regarding some climbers who had missed their flight home. From the info we had, the couple had planned to climb the arete of Crestone Needle–a difficult climb, which isn’t the normal route to the top.
Arriving at the end of South Colony Road at 07:00, we already had a couple of teams (of two) that stayed the night for an early start who’d planned to climb the Needles in hopes of finding some clues, since we really didn’t have much idea of where they might be. The rest of us (three more teams of four, who could then each split into two teams of two) set out on the trail toward the lakes to scope out the various mountain faces for any clues (south side of Humboldt, all of the approaches to the Needle, Broken Hand Pass, and over the pass to see the south side of the Crestones).
We were told the couple’s sons were on a flight to Custer County. One of our members, who has a background in psychology, stayed at the SAR barn to provide counseling, since the probability of bad news was high.
One team was to move over Broken Hand Pass and get on the south side of the Crestones to see if perhaps the climbers were lost in bad weather after making summit and sought an easier escape from the storms we’ve been having. This team ran into three men, two of which were experienced members from Douglas County SAR, and they decided to help out with the mission.
Recent rains had caused severe and sudden erosion–on the order of small rivers coming off the rock faces and literally carving grooves in the face
of the scree several feet wide by several feet deep (see the grooves looking down toward the lake in the photos), which is highly unusual. Note how muddy the lower lake appears in the photo–again, very unusual. Incredible amounts of rain in a short time would have been required to make this happen.
Team 1 requested to switch to a more secure radio channel. Bad news.
They’d checked a clue, which was spotted from their position at the base of the Needle’s arete, but at the top of the scree field there (north and west of the upper lake). Through binoculars, they’d seen a small patch of red that appeared to be a backpack with something yellow beneath it.
Meanwhile, Team 5 headed toward the orange Marmot tent that family told us the climbers owned. They found the tent, as well as the key to the rental car inside, but little else for valuable clues.
After plenty of radio chatter, teams were redirected to connect with Team 1. They’d found one of the lost climbers, and perhaps two, unsure of which they might have found. What was visible–and represented the “yellow”–was just over a one-square-foot portion of one of the climbers.
We were instructed to wait until the coroner arrived before doing any digging to identify and recover the body. Another team was redirected to bring in some needed materials for extraction. This was near 10:40. This was causing some heightened anxiety among the teams, since clouds were quickly forming and turning black above our heads and over the Wet Mountain Valley below. Lots of clouds moving different directions and inflating quickly is a bad sign–particularly considering where we were located. We needed to get done and get out quickly, since weather reported major storms to hit between noon and 13:00.
The coroner had a ride up from Flight for Life who made a tentative landing on the south side of the upper lake nearly an hour later (FFL was delayed in leaving Pueblo, and still needed to stop at the SAR barn to pick up the coroner). The terrain was terribly rough, so Art (the coroner) took quite a while to get to the scene from where he was dropped off by the chopper (not much air up there, either). As soon as he arrived and got photos, we began digging. What we’d seen previously turned out to indeed be two bodies (about 12′ apart) in the flow. Packaging the bodies and what we could find of the personal items took less than 45 minutes from that point, and we quickly headed down the scree field to the stream and lake below. FFL requested a landing zone, but didn’t like the sound of the one we’d chosen, so we had a heavy hike of nearly 1/2 mile to get to their landing zone. Because of weight restrictions, they could only take one body at a time–and because they were low on fuel, they had to get to Pueblo or Canon City to refuel before returning. All of us hoped they’d arrive again before the weather went sideways, or we’d have to figure out how to get the other body and remaining personal belongings all the way down to the vehicles (nearly three mile’s hike over rough terrain).
Fortunately, the weather held (no big wind or rain/hail/lightning) and the chopper reappeared exactly an hour later. So we were able to get both bodies back on their way home. So all that remained was the hike down the hill to our vehicles and the rough 4WD road down the mountain.
Considering all the difficulty of this mission moving from rescue to recovery, everything went as well as it possibly could have gone. Finding the bodies at all was quite a long shot in the vast expanse of rugged terrain in the South Colony Basin that hosts several 14,000′ peaks.
